One of the pioneers of Electronic music - he set up the first electronic music studio in the UK and was co-founder of EMS, source of the legendary VCS3 - and a jobbing composer, Cary was ubiquitous in English musical life outside the academy, employed frequently by the BBC as well as making soundtracks for documentary, corporate and public information films and designing sound for installations, EXPOs and exhibitions that freely mixed electronics, tape manipulation and conventional instruments. This excellent and timely collection gathers together a wide range of works (selected with Cary before his death) that gives a better sense of his flexibility and diversity than anything else released to date (and there is precious little out there). It also includes two rare-as-hen's-teeth '70s 7" releases that are miniature classics: A study on limited resources and Narcissus (an early process piece for flute and 2 tape-recorders and the only 'art' piece in the collection).All the recordings here were made between 1967 and 1973 - a fascinating period and one in which the limits of a young technology produced more human and inventive, and more interesting sounding, results than full digitalisation does today. What makes these pieces different, and of particular interest, is that they are applied musics - they have a job to do, and aren't just objects of aesthetic contemplation, making them more eloquent of the era in which they were made than are the academic electronic compositions of the same period. Parts of this release offer fragmants from a working diary - with introduced elements, samples and explanations followed by their applications... and so thoughtfully sequenced that the whole CD works as a single extraordinarily divers composition. That said, Shaped for living - a long soundtrack - is an individual gem. Nicely packaged with a short biography, useful notes, pictures and memoir.L